Monday, March 12, 2007

We are All of the Stars, But Some of Us are Looking at the Gutter (12.10.10)

Epiblogue:

Last things first. Having inexplicably awakened an hour later -- as if someone monkeyed around with my clock yesterday and stole an hour of my time -- I'm really writing under the gun this morning. I don't think I can do justice to the pivotal fourth day/fourth miracle motif in one post, and in hindsight I can see that the more pressure I felt to move things along, the more I rambled. Therefore, this will have to be part 1. Ironically, this temporal derangement does demonstrate the chaos that ensues when someone trifles with the "greater and lesser lights" that govern our earthly days and nights. But it's one thing for politicians to fool around with clocks, another thing entirely to mess with the stars that define and guide human nature.

*****

If the fifth day of creation involves the descent of ensouled movement into the world, the fourth day must involve the creation of the archetypes, just as the blueprint is prior to the building, genotype to phenotype, or logos (intelligent form) to substance. Tomberg compares it to an orchestra in which no one person has the entire score, but each member has his own instrument and his own part to play, in order to harmonize with the whole musical existentialada.

As such, the fourth day of creation "is that of the coming into being of those principles which direct 'time and tempo'" -- the creation of the sun, the moon, and the stars in order to separate night from day, to provide light to the earth, and to serve generally as cosmic designposts: "signs and seasons, days and years." Tomberg asks, "What are these other than organs of direction, i.e., conductors of time and tempo for the world-orchestra, in accordance with the music-score of the stars?"

Note as well that separation must precede order, something which is very much emphasized in Judaism. We revert to the chaos that preceded the creation if, for example, we ignore the distinction between the sexes -- which is one of the inevitable cosmic horrors of the homosexual agenda (I said agenda) and much of the so-called "sexual revolution" in general.

Looked at another way, the fourth day involves the creation of metaphysics, which is anterior to being in the same way that our personal essence is prior to existence. This is perhaps the central idea that separates the religious from the non-religious and liberal from leftist, for the secular leftist reverses this divine order and maintains that existence is prior to essence. He has no blueprint, but is a cosmic orphan who is reduced to, and determined by, mere chance and superficial causes such as race, class, and gender. This is why leftism is 180 degrees from liberalism, and why leftism is unthinkable in the absence of this inappropriate obsession with horizontal accidents. Once you acknowledge a true self -- which is to say a created self, or a center of personal freedom -- you can no longer call yourself a leftist.

Thus, it is no surprise that we see the New York Times trumpeting the scientifically "sophisticated" but otherwise terribly unsophisticated idea that human beings do not possess free will. For if human beings do possess free will, then nearly the entire ediface of leftism collapses in a heap. The absurdity of the free will deniers becomes clear if expressed explicitly, as it is in this piece at American Thinker:

"We here at The New York Times want to announce a new policy. This is that we will no longer criticize anyone, nor praise anyone. We will, in other words, hold no one responsible for his or her conduct.

"We institute this policy in light of the columns published recently in our pages arguing that human beings have no free will, that they cannot choose their own conduct. If this is so, as we believe it is -- we haven't published anyone arguing the opposite thesis, as you may have noticed -- there can be no choice about what people do. Neither Saddam Hussein, nor George W. Bush, nor Nancy Pelosi nor indeed anyone at all has anything to do with his or her conduct or, as social scientists prefer to call it, behavior."

In short, if there is no free will, then obviously there can be no a priori morality, let alone a legal system, for we are merely condemned to do what we do in a mechanistic way. On the other hand, once you acknowledge that free will is "relatively absolute" (that is, absolute within the inevitable constraints of relative existence) and that we may choose between good and evil (which are absolute, even if we cannot know them absolutely), then you have left any form of leftism behind.

The Times quotes one "expert" who is apparently compelled (for he is not free) to say that free will is merely "a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free," but "the more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don't have it." (Hmmm.... if we're not free to scrutinize it, how could we ever know that it is true that we don't have free will? Here we see how there is no truth in the absence of free will, which is why the left ends up denying both. To turn it around, if truth exists, so too does free will. Truth is the ultimate guarantor of liberty, and vice versa.)

One of our guiding "stars in the firmament" above is that of justice. This is as good an example as any of a "greater light" that allows us to see by day. That is, human beings possess an innate sense of justice -- not just this or that justice, but absolute justice. What is so ironic is that the leftist too lives by this light, but at the same time denies its reality "above" and therefore its possibility "below." This is why leftist theologies literally turn the cosmos upside down (speaking ontologically) and transmogrify into some version of "social justice" or "liberation" theology. Free will is denied up front, so that everyone becomes a victim of existence.

But if no one is free and nothing is moral, religion merely becomes the will to power, even -- or especially -- when it is dressed up in the language of entitlement and of "human rights" instead of civil liberties. For civil rights are here to protect liberty, whereas so-called "human rights" are here to deny liberty by promoting a top-down leftist agenda -- which always ends up being a great injustice from the standpoint of heaven.

Here is an eloquent "voice from the abyss" at huffingandpissed, Stan Goff. He agrees that reality is not what it appears to be, and that there is a "hidden blueprint," so to speak, ruling over us. Yes, his opinions are obviously "crazy" -- that goes without saying -- but "crazy" does not mean "random." Rather, one of the axioms of psychoanalysis is that craziness is merely order by another name. In other words, in order to heal the craziness, we must help the patient uncover the deep structure -- the implicate "lesser lights" of his night time unconscious -- that underlie the surface disorder:

"Every 'advanced' society exists as a parasite in those less 'advanced,' and that can be proven empirically and decisively. Bush is not responsible for the war in Iraq.... Civilization cannot exist in the absence of war, because civilization is itself inherently exploitative.... that is why we'll have more and more of it, and why it will eventually percolate from the peripheries populated by Dark Others into our suburbs. [How can there be "Dark Others" if war is inherent? -- ed.]

"Everything we have that we list in our catalogue of civilization is forged out of fraud, theft, and murder.... Show me the exception, and I'll take it back. [Since he is not an exception, he is a liar and a thief, so why should we believe, much less trust, him? -- ed.]

"The fine woods and metals and animal guts that make the orchestras, the stones and steel and trees for our libraries..., and the food displayed strategically along our supermarket shelves... they all require war. They are taken from cultures who first refuse to cooperate, then who are forced to cooperate or be depopulated. [All economic liberty is merely illusion; it is actually exploitation -- ed.]

"The expansive and expanding heaps of... of asphalt and glass and plastic and paint and shiny right-angles -- are scraped out of hillsides and coastlines, with the corpses of biomes and simpler cultures left behind as the mizzens of this wretched thing called civilization.... Technology is driven by scarcity, and scarcity by pillage.... This is not a mark of superiority, but the cascading catastrophe of power seeking the enslavement of first women, then slaves and colonies and nature..." [But wouldn't these women and other primitives just enslave and colonize white men if they could? -- ed.]

*****

Oh my. Imagine this fascist being in charge of your homeowners association, much less the wheels of government. At least he doesn't blame Bush.

Here is a quite literal example of "justice gone mad," for when we reject the greater light of divine justice, we are left with mere animal justice, which is no justice at all. I am always surprised at the inherent irony of secular progressives calling themselves "humanists." For one thing, to deny God is to prevent man, pure and simple.

Secondly, have you ever read a more quintessentially anti-human diatribe, at least since yesterday's New York Times idiotorial page? If human beings are what this or any other progressive says they are, then why would we ever trust progressives to set things right? If human beings are monsters of depravity, the last thing we want to do is give them more power over us. If human beings "are what they are," then how can one object to Bushitler and Co. being what they are?

No one is responsible for anything -- not even Bush -- but somehow it's mankind's fault, otherwise this person wouldn't be ranting about his sense of cosmic injustice. But where does he get his sense of injustice, since it doesn't come from "above," and he's a depraved human animal just like everyone else? Seriously, where does it come from if we are only self-interested monkeys who will commit any crime to get what we want? Indeed if we -- that is to say, civilization -- are a crime?

As Polanyi has written, this is the perennial trick of the left: to deny the traditional moral order that is "set in the stars" and to replace it with an unhinged moral impulse that rampages through postmodernity like a wildfire. We see it in the appropriately named "environmental movement," which replaces the moral order of the heavens with the fanciful imperatives of the earth, another way of destroying the possibility of man. (I hope everyone watched this documentary, which has Petey's Good Denkeeping Seal of Approval).

"Private property is public theft." "To each according to his needs." "Living wage." "Income gap." "Poverty causes crime." "Israel causes terror." "Dissent on global warming is Holocaust denial." "A baby is distinct from a woman's body only if she doesn't want to kill it." "Homosexuality is no different from heterosexuality." "Group rights." "Diversity." "Racial quotas." "Moral relativism." "The designated hitter." Each of these luciferian ideas in one way or another denies the human blueprint and overturns the order of the cosmos, especially that last one. "American" League my a**.

And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code
Your private life will suddenly explode....

You'll see a woman hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets coming round
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson....

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing, nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world, has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned the order of the soul

When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant....
--Leonard Cohen, The Future

24 comments:

Rick said...

Mr Sunshine said:
“Everything we have that we list in our catalogue of civilization is forged out of fraud, theft, and murder”

For a minute there I thought he was talking about taxes.
I want those back, by the way. Not all of them just the ones I made with the sweat of my own brow.

This is how I explain the difference between leftists and conservatives – so any newbie can understand it. It’s really more of a different between communism and capitalism.

It’s called the ‘single pie theory’. I don’t think I invented it… maybe just this particular recipe.

The communist looks at our ‘stuff’ and sees a single pie. If I got a piece, that means someone else didn’t.

The capitalist understands we can make more pies.

I’ve seen the reasonable lefty actually understand this and go…hmmm. Which is all I ask of them.

Recently I heard someone define capitalism as ‘what you get when you don’t have an imposed system’, whereas all others including communism are imposed systems. Talk about freedom. ‘No system’ once again, when it’s allowed to work, un-manipulated by government, works best. Go check our GDP, unemployment rate, etc.

Anonymous said...

I was thinking of something along these lines this weekend. I wonder how it is that the leftists don't crack under the sheer cognitive dissonance of their ideas. One the one hand, humans are just animals, no different from pigs or cows, or especially monkeys. On the other hand, we humans, though we are merely animals, are accredited with a god-like power: the ability to destroy the whole planet, along with the ability, if only we all wanted utopia, to make everything perfect.

A week or two ago I went on a rant (which I later retracted, I'm sure to the relief of many) the point of which was that animals are not human, and it is not fair to elevate them to human status because to do so means we should have to make them responsible for their behavior, particularly those actions which, when done by a human, are the most serious of crimes.

The flipside of this argument is that humans are not animals. To downgrade ourselves in this way would be to, as the NY Slimes apparently wishes, excuse any and all behavior on the basis that it is only natural, and we can't help it anyway.

The leftists refuse to see the real middle ground here: man is more than animal, but far less than God. Often, we descend to mere animality (though when that happens the result is lower than animal; it is monstrous); more rarely we ascend to a place that is higher than ourselves, and when we do we sometimes gain the ability to bring a few fellow humans along with us. This does not put us on a level with God; it merely gives us a better vantage point with which to see the wonder of His Creation.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Excellent post, Bob.
It amazes me sometimes (although it shouldn't), how Leftists can believe this hysterical hodgepodge of lies, contradictions, distortions and abortions of truths (not to mention denial of the Truth).
And all with a straight face.

Barbarians with self-proclaimed "rights."

It's true. Leftists cannot see irony.

Rick said...

Dr Bob,
Thanks for sending that link RE the global warming doc. I can’t wait to watch it tonight.
I just found out a couple of days ago that my son had to sit through Al Gore’s movie. In science class no less. I guess ‘cause they don’t have a sci-fi class. I really like how they forgot to send home a permission slip for that ‘trip’.

I always enjoy seeing images like the one below that I think really add some important proportion to the equation.

If anyone thinks we can make a dent in the source for our global warming, measure that big orange guy in the background. Don’t get too close kids, it’s hot!
Now measure the liiiiittle, liiiitttle blue guy – see if you can find him kids.

Nope that’s Jupiter. The other blue guy to the left of Jupiter.

There you’ve got it.

Keep in mind too that we the people that live on the little blue guy don’t make a dent compared to the mass of the earth either.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/sun/sun_size_distance.html

Not suggesting we go hog-wild and abuse the environment or that the earth is insignificant. My Core doesn’t allow that.

Anonymous said...

I like Ricky's pie test. Another term for it, and it's a litmus test applicable to every act, small or large, is "value-added." Value can be increased, shuffled around, or depleted. There's always a choice. And though the Goffs of this world believe in human agency, they don't want to use it to bake another pie, but to seize value, destroying whatever's in the way in the meantime.

Here's an interesting take on the concept.

--POSITIVE-SUM GAMES are games in which both sides win.... NEGATIVE-SUM GAMES are games in which both sides lose. This represents the height of irrationality to positive-sum players, but it proves a surprisingly durable choice of game-players. The self-destructive element in conjunction with aggression often derives from losing a hard zero-sum game and not accepting an offer to switch to positive-sum. As the joke runs, a genie offers a peasant one wish, but whatever he chooses his neighbor will get double. "Poke out one of my eyes," the peasant responds.--

Stephen Macdonald said...

ricky:

Leftists do indeed view the economy as a zero-sum game, which it obviously is not. This is another area where apparently intelligent people think like children.

Anonymous said...

I think the quality you have detected in the left is cynicism. There is no optimism in their viewpoint about humanity, unless of course they speak of themselves.

They tar and feather "humantiy" yet somehow forget to include themselves in. Hmmmmmm...

Yes, a delusional ideology.
Yet, all extreme ideologies contain a kernel of genuine energy or concern. What concern lies at the core of leftism? What are they so afraid of?

Anonymous said...

My take on global warming: who cares if it is or isn't true? This is our planet, and we should warm it up if we want to.

Warmer weather is pleasant; that's why people go to the Bahamas. So what's not to like? Who wants coldness anyway?

Gore and his freaks are just afraid of any kind of change. They are stuck in the past.

Rick said...

Dilys and Smoov,
I believe Dr Bob offered a similar trade ‘illustration’ in an old post where say …he was a really good basket maker but a lousy pie maker and the other guy was the reverse. Something like that... In that situation you get a lot more baskets and pies than if you forced each guy to make their own pies and baskets. Each would spend way too much time struggling with something for which he had little talent or passion.

robinstarfish said...

another green world
before and after science
here come the warm jets

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

dilys: Augean is usually pretty sharp, and this is no exception. I think it is, of course, always the politics of envy. What confuses people is that sometimes life IS a zero-sum game, and there is a tendency to simplify things (often wrongly.)

A big step for any civilization appears to be either understanding basic economics or positive-sum thinking. Surplus, whose function (in my mind) is sale and giving, is fueled by and fuels more positive-sum thinking. People may be fooled by the limited amount of resources immediately available that it is a zero sum game (one coal company dominates all the coal supplies for instance) and mob rule can turn an otherwise healthy economy into a zero-sum style world.

One thing about wealth is, though, that the only zero-sum game involved is your time. This is kind of related to Said's law - which isn't a law in the sense that you can use it to calculate but that it operates as a general principle. It goes as follows:

The price of a product is equal to the sum of the rents required to make that product.

So materials + amount of labor + percentage of factory maint. cost + salaries for management, etc more or less equals the price of what you are buying. This is not true in a mathematical sense, since obviously Said's law indicates that if Factory A produces more products in January than in February, the products from January would be cheaper...

But its a general rule of thumb, or more like a sufficient condition. For instance, a company will eventually go bankrupt if the products they sell in total are not offsetting the cost of their creation/marketing/sale. Obviously when a company begins to sell multiple products the rent can be distributed unevenly (think, loss leaders) to try to strategically increase profit.

With the same resources, all gain/loss is a zero sum game, even within a business. But again, if you build another factory, hire more workers, etc, you can increase your resources. It is rare to never that you 'run out' of resources, provided you are flexible enough to move around the market when scarcity hits a certain point.

With your time, it is a zero sum game, which is to say, if you want to work more you will have less time to do other things. You really can't get more time- your only solution is to 'value add' your work to get more money out of the same time, or 'work more efficiently' and get the same pay out of less work.

But there is no principle other than God which is universal.

Rick said...

I wish I could find the article I ran across once that showed that we are finding oil reserves faster than we can get to, and also faster than we are using it.

By the way, somewhat related, it seems when I use the search function in the top left corner of Blogger for Dr Bob’s site it just produces one OC blog post. Seems the ‘beta’ version would produce a number of posts – about 10 at a time. Am I doing something wrong or did this slightly more advanced search feature go away?

Anonymous said...

We saw "300" Saturday night.
The art of filmmaking has evolved. Moral relativism is becoming passe. The film broke all weekend records for a March release.

Imagine 300 bronze silhouette Grecian urn Spartans animated by their love of liberty coming to life and bravely sending thousands of foreign destroyers straight to Hell.  The 300 Spartans believed they were going to Hades and Miller delivers them into a Brugel the Elder atmosphere and now they rest in Time and in our free and living hearts.

Don't stop me if you've heard this before:
The Goffs and the Gores and the Goths live in Hades and they damn well choose to.

Van Harvey said...

Only have a quick moment - new project started today... oh the joys of Corp. America(I'm a software developer... they don't have a computer for me yet!)

Leftist Economic Worldview = Root out other peoples pies--> Scarcity-Destructive Mindset --> Force, no Rights --> Imitate Jungle outlook --> Need For Group, Power, Control, Screaming Rudeness

Classical liberal Economic Worldview = Bake Pies --> wealthy-creative Mindset --> Imitate Heavenly outlook--> trade, Rights--> enjoys Community, Polite Manners, Discussion

Juliec, The Leftist hasn't proper ideas, only assertions & excuses to advance agendas.

And after looking at this, while it makes sense for the Classical Liberal Worldview to progress from left to right as above... I think the Leftist Worldview would be more accurate to show starting at the right (bottom) and progressing left.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Funny thing-- about "Fraud, theft and murder"-- I had a biology teacher in high school, a most independent sort of mind-- who in teaching trophic science (that is, of energy transfer through levels of life) would call plants 'the noble plants' (because they make their own food) and animals "Thieves, Murderers and Ghouls" - referring to, herbivores (steal from plants), carnivores (kill other animals), and scavengers.

His humorous suggestion: Eat only animals, plants are the good guys!

Meat is value-added energy.

Anonymous said...

"Private property is public theft." "To each according to his needs." ...
"Moral relativism." "The designated hitter." Each of these luciferian ideas in one way or another denies the human blueprint and overturns the order of the cosmos, especially that last one. "American" League my a**.

Coffee, meet Nose...

Anonymous said...

"Tales abound of how pies vanish from window sills where they are left to cool - or even food from the stove top. Nearly every family has seen glowing eyes staring in through a window at night. "

(You cannot make this stuff up)

Anonymous said...

ms. e -

As we tuck all the little kits in tonight, warn them of "Der Waschbaermann!"

Van Harvey said...

ms. e said... "We saw "300" Saturday night. The art of filmmaking has evolved. Moral relativism is becoming passe. "

Makes you think it's possible, doesn't it? I saw The 300 this weekend & was knocked over too (posted about it on my site). With Movies like that & LOTR & Narnia coming out... and sites like these from the Gen X & Y'r 'kids' stepping up as full grown Men, and you begin to dare to believe that the Leftist-man behind the curtain has been exposed too much for people to buy the smoke & mirrors much longer.

Dare to dream... better yet, keep grabbing that curtain & yanking it open wide.

Anonymous said...

Outstanding post, and thank you for quoting Leonard Cohen's "The Future," which I think is one of the most brilliant songs ever written.

Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow.
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder.

Anonymous said...

If people don't like what we're doing to the planet, they should just get the hell off of it.

There's plenty of oil to go around, and I intend to burn my share.

Save the Whales? I've seen a whale--and the novelty wore off in five minutes. We don't need 'em.

Lefty whiner do-gooders should be rounded up and sent to Palestine.

Anonymous said...

>>For if human beings do possess free will, then nearly the entire ediface of leftism collapses in a heap<<

Best express our free will now, for the night is coming when no one will have free will.

Anonymous said...

Mrs.e, I saw two of those little shining-eyed German transplants last week! They were running so fast they tumbled over themselves. Boy are they cute!

phil g said...

Robin:
Ah yes, Brian Eno.

I kept buying his albums in the hopes that I'd eventually 'get' him...after all of those albums, not sure I do yet.

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